What I'm Shoving In My Ears These Days.

Last night was a good night in the old homestead. Using a friend's advice, I reset my ancient ipod mini and got it working again, after a month of being dead to the world. I held down the MENU button and the center button until it blinked to life and all was good in the world, again. I jammed it into it's cradle and opened it in Itunes and low and behold, all music was still there, where I left it.

So, while I was in Itunes, I did a little shopping around for some music.

I really dug that piano rif that begins the trailer for "Stranger Than Fiction". According to the movie soundtrack, that's "The Way We Get By", by Spoon.
DOWNLOADED THAT!

(I also listened to the three other Spoon tracks on that disk and I like them, too. I might have to download their whole disk. Those kids are all right, if you ask me! I also welcome burned CDs of their music, if someone was inclined to make one for me - wink wink!)

There's a car commercial that uses "Mad World" pretty effectively and I went ahead and looked up a version of that. I really like Michael Andrews version of the song and found it on the Donnie Darko CD.
DOWNLOADED THAT!

While I was feeling a little melancholy, I remembered that I didn't have a very good version of "Leaving On a Jet Plane." (A song that I referenced in THIS blog entry.) I found the well known version by Peter, Paul & Mary on their Greatest Hits CD. Heart-breaking.
DOWNLOADED THAT!

Speaking of riffs that you can barely identify, I was recently thinking about the Art Institute montage from Ferris Buellers Day Off and wanted the music from that. Did a little bit of digging around on IMDB and found out that it's called "Please, please, please, let me get what I want" by The Smiths.
DOWNLOADED THAT!

I also downloaded a few tracks for my Open Court, Pre-Show MegaMix! I like for that to be upbeat, snappy and chockful of recognizable songs that the waiting audience can sing along to, while they wait for the show to begin.

"Time Warp" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show?
DOWNLOADED THAT!

"Rock the Casbah" by The Clash
DOWNLOADED THAT!

And finally, I sent my bittorrent downloader scouring the available files to find copies of H oward S tern's radio show from S irius. I admit it. He makes me laugh. I used to regularly download the shows and listen to them on the train ride into work. A single show would last me an entire week. I found three shows from November, almost immediately. They should be downloaded when I get home tonight.
I should have his familiar voice back in my ears, by tomorrow morning.

BABA BOOEY! BABA BOOEY!

Think back to your childhood, when you first discovered music and and sought out artists that you liked and wanted to listen to. I grew up in the cassette era. I used to make tons of mix-tapes to give to girls and friends and girlfriends. I took such precise care to time them and fit as much music as I could on each disk. I was so dedicated to drawing original art on the cover sleeves, along with song titles and artists.
I remember discovering cassette singles, which was an economical way to get the songs that I wanted, without having to buy whole disks. I can also remember having to buy entire cassettes for just a single song.. (Bought an entire Pink Floyd disk, when all I wanted was "Learning to Fly.")
It wasn't until I moved to Chicago in 2000, that someone burned me my first CD. A Queen compilation that had all the Queen songs that I wanted on a single disk. (A birthday present.) I still have that bad-boy.

It just seems as if we've come such a long way, since I was a kid, technologically speaking. My PC has opened up worlds to me. Consider the ease with which I acquire music. If I see an actress on tv that I think is cute, I can Google her and if she's naked, oogle her. If I want to know about a movie, I check IMDB. If I want to know about anything else, I hit the Wikipedia. (So long Encyclopedias!)I can order pizza online. I can pay my bills online. I can order t-shirts. Or design my own. Or write friends. Or invite people to parties. Or play games. Or access a Google Satellite and zoom in on my parents house, in far away Kentucky.

It never used to be this easy. I can't wait to see where we go from here.

Cheers,
Mr.B